API-led connectivity is the most important design pattern facing IT today. It is the key to digital transformation and an IT strategy that unlocks an organization's products and services to its consumers. There are many aspects to this pattern, so in this article, I will put down some key tenants and a few ideas from this. Then, I hope, through comments and conversations, I can begin a discussion and follow up with more articles in the future.
As a Senior Solution Architect in EPAM's API Practice, the most impactful change that we can bring about is the adoption of API-led connectivity. Most organizations have APIs to some degree, often evolving out of an SOA or microservices approach. APIs are brought into an organization, one at a time, so that, from natural evolution, there will be many APIs, but they won't follow an API-led connectivity approach. The next step is to follow this standard, but there is often resistance, as in all changes. This leads organizations down a point-to-point path of connecting their systems, which is an anti-pattern in the API world. This was like the days of client-server applications, which were ultimately replaced by a model-view-controller design pattern. API-led connectivity has a similar concept. In the model-view-controller, the users of the system connect at the view layer, the controller manages the orchestration, and the model connects to the data.